Author Archive

Bullying in the workplace will continue as long as employees continue to decide not to fight back. If the workplace bullies never face any opposition then they start to believe that their oppressive ways are working and they continue their irresponsible behavior. That is why I had decided to fight back.

Fighting back is hard and there is always the risk of getting terminated. However, the risk is much less if one takes small steps in the process. One of the first steps is to talk to the Human Resources Department about this. If nothing changes and bullying continues, then go back to the HR department again and put in another complaint. And the most important thing is to document all the steps along the way, including copies of email exchanges and other communications. If there are other witnesses who might have watched the bullying, then one needs to make sure to identify those people in the complaints to HR.

If after 2 or 3 such requests to HR, there is still no change in the bullying behaviors, then it will be important to report this to the state’s Human Rights Department or to the Equal Employment Opportunity department. At any of these steps, if the company decides to terminate the employee, that can make their situation even worse with the government departments. It is true that a company can fire an employee at any time, but if there is a trail of documentation that shows that the company has not been taking any steps in correcting the problem and instead decided to get rid of the employee, the company will have a difficult legal situation on their hands.

On Tuesday November 13, 2018, I will have an opportunity to speak about prevention of child sexual abuse at the Kentucky Counselors Association conference in Louisville, KY. The topic will be “Prevention of child sexual abuse – the ethical challenges”. This presentation will be based on my second book. I am excited to have another opportunity to share my observations and thoughts.

If we really want to become more effective at prevention of child sexual abuse, it is important for all of us to be aware of the issues and the challenges involved. That is the main point I have tried to make in my book “Father Figure – My Mission to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse” and that is also the same message I try to deliver through my presentations. If we are well aware of the challenges, then we are better prepared to take actions when an opportunity arises.

The story I describe in my presentations does an excellent job of illustrating the issues and the challenges. I talk about the existing issues with systems such as the child protective services as well as with law enforcement. These are organizations that generally do good work, but they don’t seem to have the flexibility to focus on preventive situations. I also talk about family involvement. It is critical that family members get involved in working with systems and services to keep the children protected.

The bottom line is that everyone, including even ordinary citizens, should try to get involved if there is an opportunity to keep a child safe from a possibly risky situation.

I am excited to have an opportunity to speak at the Kentucky Counselors Association conference in Louisville, KY on Tuesday November 13, 2018, on the topic of “PTSD from bullying triggers obsessive compulsive disorder”. This presentation is based on my first book dealing with long term psychological impact of bullying.

A few years back I had spoken at this same conference. It is a fairly large conference, well attended by professionals from all across the state of Kentucky. I am looking forward to speaking to a larger than usual audience. Although I have been speaking on this topic for almost seven years, there are still a lot of professionals out there who have not been exposed to the fact that the long term mental impact on victims of bullying can be extremely severe. That is why I plan to continue speaking on this topic as long as possible.

I will also have an exhibit table at this conference. That will allow me to display all my books for attendees to see and ask questions about. That is another excellent way to interact with the attendees at a conference. Even people who were not able to attend my presentation, will be able to visit the exhibit table and we can still have a discussion. I have made many long lasting contacts through connections at conferences like this one.

Once we all understand the true sufferings of many victims of bullying we will be able to work hard to eradicate bullying from our schools.

Bullying in the workplace happens for a variety of reasons. But it all comes down to the bully (in most cases the manager or the supervisor) needing to feel in full control of the situation. In my case the supervisor clearly had an unpleasant personal life that she talked about a lot at the workplace. She felt that bullying employees at the workplace gave her the power she did not have in her personal life.

It is true that there are many people out there whose personal lives are not always happy and well settled, but they all do not end up bullying other people at work. However, if the person is someone who needs to have control of all aspects of his or her personal life and feels unable to achieve that control, it is likely that the unfulfilled “need to have control” will spill over on to the workplace.

My supervisor used to talk about her ‘not so positive’ personal life issues in front of all employees on a very regular basis. It was very clear to all employees that she was not happy with things at home and needed to have an outlet. By nature she was not an easy person to communicate with – but I believe her personal issues had made things even worse. I believe that if she was getting help from a therapist for her personal issues and if she had received training at the workplace about how to communicate with the employees, she could have been a decent manager without having to depend on bullying others.

If one wants to prevent something, then it becomes necessary to take some precautionary measures. It is the same thing when it comes to preventing child sexual abuse. In this case, precautionary measures include keeping an eye open for any possible red flags and following through to make sure children are not at risk of any kind of sexual misconduct.

In the story I wrote about in my book “Father Figure – my mission to prevent child sexual abuse”, I talk about a single mother (named Kim in the book), with two young daughters, starting to date a convicted child molester (named Charlie in the book). I absolutely agree that just because Charlie was convicted of a crime, it does not take away his right to start dating again. That is not a problem at all. The question really is whether or not Kim needed to be more careful about introducing her daughters too quickly to Charlie. My suggestion is that someone in Kim’s place should take a bit of time to get to know Charlie better before introducing her daughters to him.

I was a family friend and had decided to do a bit of background research on Charlie. I found a lot of information on him simply from publicly available documents. I uncovered a large number of red flags that I had shown to Kim. The red flags clearly indicated to me that there were risks involved for Kim’s daughters and that she needed to be careful about moving forward.

Prevention means doing something proactively, keeping the children’s safety in mind. I often tell people that keeping your front door open does not mean that there will be a burglary for sure, but locking the door is the right preventive move.

I am excited to have an opportunity to speak at the Utah School Counselors Association conference in Ogden, UT, on Friday October 12, 2018, on the topic of “PTSD from bullying triggers obsessive compulsive disorder”. This will be another opportunity to make the point to a group of school counselors that bullying during school years can lead to devastating mental illness for victims.

Many school counselors do understand the possible significant long term impact of bullying. However, I am aware that there are still some school staff members who do not believe that bullying can cause any significant long term damage. They believe that once you are out of school, whatever happened during the school years fade away quickly. Unfortunately that is not the case for many victims of bullying.

Every child has his or her unique personality. There are some children who can ignore the bullying and can move on without allowing it to impact themselves. They are the lucky ones. But there are many others who are not able to ignore it, and consequently, have to live with the long term impact. It’s not their fault that they are not able to ignore the bullying. The responsibility does not fall on them. The responsibility of maintaining a safe school environment falls on all school staff and the parents. It is critical that ALL school staff understand that ALL children deserves a non-threatening school environment.

I look forward to a good presentation with some interesting follow-up discussions.

Many employers do not do anything about preventing bullying and harassment in the workplace because they believe that employees have no rights and that if employees do not like the environment, they will just leave. This is why it is important for employees to learn that there are things one can do to fight back against bullying and harassment.

I wrote the book titled “How to stand up to workplace bullying and take on an unjust employer” primarily to make the point that there are things an employee can do to fight back against bullying and harassment in the workplace. Many employers simply do not want to take the trouble involved in trying to prevent bullying in the workplace and maintain a peaceful work environment. They just hope that if someone is not able to survive in their workplace environment, then they would just quit and go somewhere else.

And a lot of employees do end up doing that – they leave a hostile work environment and try to find a more acceptable workplace. This is what many employers count on. But employers do have the responsibility to maintain a safe environment for all employees. Most successful organizations take this responsibility seriously and establish and follow appropriate processes and procedures to handle complaints of bullying and harassment in the workplace. These employers realize that employees do have rights and that it will not be good for the organization if one or more employees decide to fight back.

I am excited to have an opportunity to speak at the Utah School Counselors Association conference in Ogden, UT, on October 12, 2018. The topic of my presentation will be “Prevention of child sexual abuse – the ethical challenges”. This will be another opportunity to make the point to a group of school counselors that anyone working with children in any capacity must be aware of the risks children face in the community.

I have spoken in front of school counselors on many occasions. Through these presentations and subsequent discussions I have come across several school counselors who felt that they really did not need to sit through a presentation like this. They felt that their jobs do not necessarily require them to be aware of these issues associated with child sexual abuse. I have always tried to explain to them that first of all, every adult (irrespective of what they do for a living) needs to be aware of these issues and must look out for the red flags. And secondly, anyone who works with children on a regular basis, in whatever capacity, must understand these issues well and know what to do and how to do it in case a relevant situation arises.

A victim had once told me that she had reported a sexual abuse to her school counselor, but the counselor immediately went back to her family and discussed it with the victim’s mother, who minimized the situation and denied the problem. After that incident, the victim had decided not to say anything to anybody at all. This is one of the reasons as to why school counselors need to be aware of all the issues associated with child sexual abuse.

It appears to me that most schools still are not able to get the parents involved whole-heartedly in their bullying prevention process. Over the last few years some of the schools I spoke at had arranged for me to speak to a group of parents. Interestingly in most of those cases only a few parents attended.

This is an extremely important factor because without the cooperation and assistance of the parents it is very difficult for school staff to maintain a safe environment at the school. In my book “A Life Interrupted – the story of my battle with bullying and obsessive compulsive disorder” I have included a whole chapter describing my interactions (in adult years) with the worst bully from my school days. From that most revealing encounter I came to understand that this specific bully had a very negative home life and was taking out his frustrations by bullying me and other kids.

Since then I have now come across several situations where bullies have shared with me their thoughts about why they end up bullying other kids. In many cases it is the negative family situation that drove them to act this way.

I am glad that most school staff try their best to get the parents involved in their programs. It may not be an easy thing to accomplish, but I certainly hope that they will continue their efforts to get the support they need from the parents to minimize bullying in schools.

Through my own experience in fighting successfully against wrongful termination I have discovered that there are a lot of things that employees need to learn regarding the rights they have in dealing with situations like these. Most employees seem to believe that they don’t have any rights at all. What I have learnt is that that is not true.

It is true that most states allow at-will employment – that allows an employer to terminate an employee at any time. But the point is that the employers cannot be irresponsible about this and cannot just get rid of an employee simply because he or she was bringing up some difficult issues that needed to be handled properly.

In my specific example, I was bringing up issues that were affecting me personally and were also affecting the organization negatively. Then suddenly I was terminated – it was clear to see that they did that simply because they were not truly interested in handling the issues brought up by me. That is why it became a wrongful termination.

This is the main reason why documentation is extremely important. If there is a trail of documentation (prior to the termination) that shows that there have been some conflicts between the employee and the employer, then termination could be perceived as a wrongful act.

That is why good employers make sure that all complaints and issues brought up by employees are handled according to an established process.